


Insomnia and Tough Conversations

by Corvid_Knight



Series: Mutantstuck [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Mutantstuck, ambrose is uh. he's doing a great job at not letting d change his mind, i am struggling to type this due to being outside, shitty sleeping habits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2021-01-29 10:41:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21408859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corvid_Knight/pseuds/Corvid_Knight
Summary: D can't always sleep in the new place, so he decides to go bother Ambrose.
Series: Mutantstuck [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1309922
Comments: 12
Kudos: 99





	Insomnia and Tough Conversations

The new place is great, or at least it would be if you didn't keep waking up every time anyone else sets foot out of their room. It's not just rousing a lil' bit and passing out again, either—you get the whole package, heart racing and mouth dry, every muscle in your body tensed up. It's sort of weird, honestly—you haven't gotten kicked out of a foster home without decent advance warning since you were like...what, ten? Maybe eight, come to think of it. Since you were a lil' kid who probably shouldn't've had to know what was going on and did anyway. 

Why the hell did they even move you in the middle of the night, anyway? It can't have been more convenient to anyone—was it a shame thing, not wanting to have the goddamn neighbors see the kids go? Did they actually _mean_ to give you shit to have nightmares about years later? What was the god damn _point_? 

Yeah, you're not going back to sleep at this point, but you guess you might as well get up and see if you can stop thinking about dumb shit. Bro's absent from his still-made bed, so you don't have to worry about waking him up, but he probably wasn't the one who woke you up—he almost never spends the night in the bedroom now that no one's threatening him into doing it, and the door to the girls' room is open a couple inches. It's probably Roxanne who's out; Reaux closes doors when she goes through them, whether they need to be closed or not. You're not totally sure where she is and you feel like you shouldn't be too worried about it. 

Bro's the one you're interested in, anyway. He's probably on the couch—at this point he's got a couple pillows and a blanket or two folded flat on the floor under there, stashed on about the third day he slept in the main room. He's pretty much got past glaring challengingly at whoever comes in, too; in the flickering light from the muted television, you can see him glance up at you for barely a second before he returns his attention to his phone. 

Ooh, that's not a great expression on his face either. He's awake because he's pissed about something, you're guessing. 

"Yo, Ambrose." The use of his name even in as low a voice as you can manage provokes a disgusted grimace, but he _does_ raise his arms so you can pull the blanket down and settle yourself down between it and him, face down across his chest. 

"Heavy ass." 

"Yeah, _finally._" You've got issues with being able to stay at a healthy weight; you know your bro's a lot happier about what you've managed to gain than he lets on. Plus you're still not heavy enough to actually smother him yet. "So who're you getting all worked up over this time?" 

"What, you're a mindreader now?" He scoffs and settles his phone on the back of your head; you can feel him tap-typing at it again. God but you hope he's not trying to code on the damn thing. That'll put him in a shit mood for _days_. "Seriously, though, how do you know it's a _who_ 'n not a _what_?" 

"Eh, call it a lucky guess." You tilt your head back enough to make eye contact, waiting until he really looks at you before you turn on your most charming smile. "Plus I know you complain about shit to me, if it's a _what_." 

"I mean. You do tend to save me the time and effort of setting the _what_ on fire most of the time, so it works out, yeah?" 

"Mmmm-hmmm...we should probably stop doing that." 

"Hey, it's cheaper 'n therapy." 

"Only if we're setting _other_ people's shit on fire. And that's, you know, a lil' eensy bit—" 

"Illegal?" 

"Uh-huh." 

"Eh, that's never stopped us before." 

"Bro-_ooo._" You shake your head like a dog until Bro loses his grip on his phone; he somehow manages to catch it before it hits the floor. (On a side note, how the hell does he always do that?) "Wait. Can't we afford therapy now? Like seriously. Sort of seriously." 

"You wanna go to therapy?" 

"...sort of." 

"Aight, I'll get right on that. I ain't into it though." He rolls his eyes, not losing that lazy smile that came out about when he brought up the concept of arson. "You should go. I bet Reaux could come up with a whole bunch of bullshit 'bout how guys that grow up without consistent parental figures are all fucked up 'n shit." 

"Oh, shut up." You grab his phone when he starts to raise it again, tossing it down into the void between his body and the couch. This time he's not even close to being able to catch it, thanks to your body being in the way. "Besides, we have _literally_ the same issues with our parents, dumbass." 

"I don't got issues 'cause I don't got parents. Simple." 

"I mean. You sort of do? We do. They existed, right?" Look, you've never actually let yourself be curious about the identity of your biological parents, okay? Like, you just—there's always been other shit to put the energy you would've used up wondering about them into, you've always had better, more important, more _crucial_ shit to think about—okay yeah you've got a hangup over this. God fucking damn it. 

Bro blinks at you, raising an eyebrow. "You got shit going on in that cute lil' head, bro?" 

"Okay, I'm not cute when I'm tired and you know it, but yeah. What do you know about 'em?" 

"Who?" 

Is he playing dumb or did you just jump subjects too fast for him to track? Eh, give him the benefit of the doubt, clarify and move on. "Our parents is who, dude, c'mon. I know you have to had looked them up when you were fuckin' with our records." 

The look that flashes across his face is...unfamiliar. You don't much like it, even if you can't tell whether the dominant emotion is anger or sadness or confusion or whatever the hell. It's an unhappy look, and you hate that shit on any of your siblings. "Not like there's a lot about 'em to find, D." 

"Oh come on—don't give me that, Mr. Data Shark." 

"Look, I've got names, dates of birth and date of death, but that's pretty much it." 

You already know that shit. What you want to know... "But _how_?" 

"Holy shit that's morbid." Bro huffs out a tired chuckle and flicks his fingers through your hair, in the process reminding you that you really do need to take a fucking shower tomorrow. Wait, can you do it now while you're thinking of it? Nah, Reaux's definitely asleep and Roxanne probably is, might as well let them stay that way. "Why do you even care?" 

"I dunno, man. Just answer the question?" 

"...yeah." He makes a disgruntled sound deep in his chest; you feel it more through your contact with him more than you hear it. "I can't." 

"Dude—" 

"I'm serious, I don't know either." 

You growl and raise yourself up so you can give him a proper glare. "We both know you looked that shit up—" 

"Yeah, 'n there ain't anything." He meets your glare with one of his own for all of three seconds; then he closes his eyes. It's more shame than anything else, you think—it's not like he's lying to you. Ambrose doesn't have that much of a problem with eye contact when he's lying. "Nothing in any record Roxanne 'n me found. Not like it'd been deleted, either—couldn't tell if it'd never been entered in the first place, or if someone rewrote the data and saved over it." 

You kind of have to just stop for a second and give that some thought, lowering your head back onto Bro's chest as you do. The unfocused half of your brain notes that he's been borrowing Reaux's body wash instead of bothering to pick up a new container of the kind he usually likes, and that he _really_ doesn't like your insistence at going down this line of questioning if his heartrate's anything to go by. Too bad; if he's not gonna use his words you're not gonna let it go. 

"So...what?" Maybe it's the fact that it's like two in the morning, but all you can think of is conspiracy theories. Hell, might as well articulate them. "What the fuck, did our parents seriously get covered up by the government or something?" 

"Ew, no?" Bro flicks your forehead, gently enough that it doesn't even kind of hurt. "Government doesn't delete shit, just buries it far enough that I gotta actually do a bit of digging." 

Hmm. "Yeah, well, _somebody_ covered it up. Right?" 

"Dunno." 

Okay then, crazy leap of logic time. "Dude, maybe they were like, mutants and—" 

You've got a whole bullshit scenario concocted completely off the cuff here. You're actually sort of vaguely proud of it, but Bro doesn't give you time to spin it out for him—you get to the very first point, the cornerstone you intend to build everything else on, and he goes stiff underneath you, hand tightening in your hair until you hiss in a breath. At least that makes him register what he's doing and ease up, although you'd rather he pick a different way than jerking both hands away from you like you just burned him. 

"Bullshit," he snaps out, and you have to take another second to recalibrate. 

"Huh?" Ooookay. He's never really cared for mutants, but like. This level of shit's new. You push yourself up again and swallow a curse as you see he's got that stupid stubborn _blank_ look frozen on his face again. Dammit. 

"They ain't mutants," he mutters as you shift your weight to balance without his touch to steady you. "_We_ ain't mutants." 

"Well yeah, I feel like I'd have noticed _that_ by now." There's absolutely no point in keeping eye contact when he's being like this (and also you're tired as hell) so you huff and faceplant back down onto his chest. "Didn't you tell me you were over this shit?" 

"Dunno what you're talkin' about." 

"_Sure_ you don't." 

"If you're gonna be a dick, get off me and go sleep in your own bed." 

"Nope. Can't get rid of me that easy, Bro." Wow. That escalated a lil' fast for your tastes, honestly. "Especially when you sound like...oh, what the fuck was her name? Something with a _K_, I think. I sort of blocked out like ninety percent of the year I came out—" 

Bro groans and gives you a half-hearted shrug that fails to move you even a single inch. "You know it ain't like that—you're human. They ain't. Fuckin' simple." 

"_Dude._" 

"...shut up." 

"No, I'm serious here. What the fuck is wrong with you?" He's never said shit like that around you before. Like, you always knew he's weird about mutants or metahumans or whatever the hell the right word is, but _fuck._ He can't just say that and think it's okay. He _can't._ "Ambrose—" 

He grunts out an irritated noise. Not quite a word, but it repeats his last sentiment pretty damn well. 

"No, nope, you do _not_ get to pull the _poor lil' me_ card right now—" 

"At least I remember to use _your_ name even when you piss me off," he points out, and you do actually have to shut up for that. Like, you can't even say he's wrong—he's never deadnamed you, not once since you told him your name was D—and you can't really say it's different, not with how he's pretty much replaced the name you think of as his with just...Bro. 

You...yeah. You fucked up. And yeah, the whole mutant thing is an issue that needs to be addressed, but it sure as hell isn't going to get done tonight. Not when he's like this, not when you're the cause of it, not when Reaux's not here to smooth shit back into place between the two of you. 

You should probably still try. But...

"...I'm gonna get up and put in that DVD your boyfriend gave you. The musical, alright?" 

"You know I'm probably gonna pass out fifteen minutes in." 

"Yeah, and you know I won't last ten. That's sort of the whole point."

* * *

As usual, the morning is sort of a crisis, by which you mean that Roxanne sets part of the kitchen on fire again when you're not fast enough to come in and give her a hand with breakfast. Luckily this one's the kind that just needs to have the pan it's (mostly) contained in gingerly scooped up and deposited in the sink, where it can have water ran over it until it's just smouldering, but still. It's a lot of action and decisions and temporary stress for somebody who just now woke up, okay? 

With that in mind, your lapse of memory is...well, maybe not forgivable, actually. Understandable, though? Yeah, understandable. By the time you remember that there's shit that still needs talking over, Bro's managed to make himself scarce for the whole goddamn weekend, off to hang with Egbert. By the time he comes back with a whole new set of maybe-fabricated and definitely-exaggerated stories about the shit they've gotten up to this time, you've kind of just...

You forgot. 

Even something that's as big a potential problem as this could be, you just kind of...forgot.


End file.
